This invention relates to a process for die punching (stamping) a strip of material such as metal, to a machine for performing the process, and to a product produced by the process. While the process and apparatus described and claimed herein have utility in other fields, the specific example described and claimed herein relates to the production of steel laminations for an electromotive device such as a motor.
The conventional manner of producing laminations is by feeding a long strip of lamination steel through a progressive die. The die has a series of stations and at each station a cut is made in the steel strip, thereby progressing from strip material to finished laminations.
In one process, a strip of straight slit steel is fed into a progressive die which progressively shapes the straight strip into finished laminations. In another process, a wide sheet of metal is cut by a scroll die into a plurality of scroll or zigzag strips, each scroll strip including a series of connected precut sections or discs. Each disc is then shaped by a progressive die into a finished lamination. Further, the discs have pilot holes in them, and each station of the progressive die has pilot pins which engage the pilot holes of the discs for the purpose of orienting the discs properly in the die stations during the punching operations.
There has been a problem with the foregoing prior art procedure which has resulted in a substantial downtime and loss of lamination steel. The problem arises because the between-center spacing between the successive die stations of the progressive die is fixed but the between-center spacing, or distance, between lamination discs may vary. As a specific example, a progressive die may have a feed length of 5.787″; a spacing of 5.787″±0.0002″ between stations one and two; and, because the tolerance is nonaccumulative, a spacing of 17.361″±0.0002″ between stations one and four. The center-to-center distance between lamination discs, on the other hand, are variable and the variations are accumulative.
An attempt to solve the foregoing problem has been to make the between-center spacing of successive lamination discs slightly longer than the theoretical feed length. For example, the between-center dimension between the discs has been made up to 0.0020″ longer than the feed length. This extra length can cause the metal strip to bow or buckle as it moves through the die; on the other hand, if the between-center spacing of the discs is not long enough, the discs cannot be fed through the die because the pilot pins of the dies cannot match the pilot holes of the discs. The result has been a disruption of the punching operation and a loss of strip metal.
It is a general object of this invention to provide improved process and apparatus for avoiding the aforementioned problems.